Nothing whilst people have a negative attitude about it.

If you want to know the benefits and reasons, watch, and listen, to Pearson's interview on Super League TV.

.... if, say, both clubs are spending the equivalent of £5k per academy player.
Then 7k per academy player is a big increase, both clubs save money, and the players will be involved in better quality teams, which should improve their progression.

Don't agree with it, mind.

Then maybe the clubs involved should have announced the move with the finer detail included so people could make a considered opinion.
But they didn't .
From what I can see it's purely a cost cutting exercise. Rovers vote for the marquee rule then scrap their academy to piggy back ours. Priceless.
Maybe the clubs should have come together to invest in getting younger children involved in the sport. I'm sure they could have asked Leeds Rhinos for advice on that. Then the talent pool would have been bigger.
The massive irony is is that as soon as AP's pet Radford gets his hands on an academy product he coaches the confidence out of them, scapegoats them and then ships them out.
If it wasn't so tragic it would be hilarious, and is indicative of the downward direction of our club.
Ask yourselves this, would any of the big four clubs even consider such a proposal? Of course not.
AP has talked the talked long enough now. Shame he couldn't walk the walk.

I'm not convinced by this argument about spending more money on less players increasing the odds of bringing players through. It is widely believed that a big reason why the England/formerly GB team have fallen so far behind Australia is the smaller talent pool compared to years ago. Football is awash with money, yet similar is believed about why the England continually underachieve.

For me, it's about playing the odds. The larger the talent pool, the more chance of finding and nurturing those who will make it. I'm not convinced that halving your source will be less detrimental than the increased time spent with those you do take on will be beneficial. IMO it's like backing less horses but with larger stakes, when you win you'll win bigger, but it will almost certainly less often.

Also, our problem hasn't chiefly been the lack of quality in the academy, IMO it's been that we have mostly been unable to convert good youngsters into genuine first-teamers. I would say that on the whole, our youngsters look on a par with most other teams' when they first come through. The difference is that 18 months/2 years down the line they don't tend to have moved on at the same rate (if at all). From an outsider's perspective that looks more like a failing at first-team level than academy.

Might pan out differently, but we'll see.

Spot on. It was almost like a reaction to the tripe served up at Wakey. "Here's some half-d good news. We don't know the full details yet though". Clueless.

It just baffles me how Pearson seems so gobsmacked at the reaction of the fans.

There was a time that something like this would have baffled me but the club as a whole seems to be so out of touch with the fans these days...

Completely agree.

Also, if as Pearson says, academy players will get a higher level of coaching, well, from who? Let's be realistic, the new academy will be made up with current academy coaches from either club.

The blockage is at first team level. We're seeing it with a number of our current squad in their early twenties who made their debut under Gentle's tenure, but haven't kicked on yet (or left). How is this going to change?

Agreed. Green and Bowden are prime examples. Not [ibad[/i players, but how much have they actually progressed since becoming first-teamers? They have both been in and around the first team since 2012, but have they really established themselves as good quality SL players? I don't think they have, as evidenced by our noticeable drop when they interchange for Paea and Watts.

.... maybe Bowden and Green are now as good as they'll ever be?
There's no guarantee that coaching will turn an average player into a good player, whatever the sport.

That is a possibility. I was using them as an example of a pattern rather than focussing on them individually, however. They are indicative of the rule, not exceptions IMO. As said, the problem seems to be that player development seems to stall not long after hitting the first team. That suggests one of 2 things; either you’re right and the players we have get to be as good as they’re ever going to by around 20-22, or they are not reaching their potential.

The former would mean our coaches do a pretty amazing job getting players to their absolute peak so quickly, going against the grain of it taking other teams/coaches/players years of continual improvement. It would also suggest that we are pretty unlucky with our choices of young players repeatedly looking the business up to academy level but hitting their ceiling almost immediately after with few exceptions. The latter would mean that something is going wrong somewhere.